


Welcome Back?

by yourlibrarian



Series: Reviews [18]
Category: Gilmore Girls
Genre: Episode Review, Gen, Meta
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-12
Updated: 2016-12-12
Packaged: 2018-09-08 05:30:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,139
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8832280
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yourlibrarian/pseuds/yourlibrarian
Summary: Watching the Gilmore Girls return to TV was a letdown. It's been several years since I saw the series, but since I watched it well after it finished it hasn't been gone that long for me. And strangely, the characters don't seem to have moved on that much, which I grew to believe was intentional.





	

Watching the Gilmore Girls return to TV was a letdown. It's been several years since I saw the series, but since I watched it well after it finished it hasn't been gone that long for me. And strangely, the characters don't seem to have moved on that much, which I grew to believe was intentional.

When I first tried watching the GG series five or six years ago, I was initially put off by its style. My partner called it pretentious. However I stuck with it largely because I wanted to learn about Jared Padalecki's arc in it since I was in SPN fandom at the time.

I discovered, after I got through the first season, that I was enjoying it on its own terms. And as I was watching it regularly, my partner caught enough bits in passing that he began to sit with me and watch too. In the end, we both watched the whole series. And for both of us, the best thing about it was the quirkyness of Stars Hollow, and the residents' little rituals and disputes -- essentially the small things in their everyday lives. It was whimsical but with emotional depth. Only a few weeks ago, I recommended GG to a friend who's been going through some stressful stuff and I pitched it as a cozy view.

We did, however, think there was too much Kirk as time went on, and we definitely felt that way about this first episode of its return. But I got the feeling that across the 4 episodes there was an effort to address all the people and details that had made up the original series. I give them credit for that because it was a relatively long running show and it's hard to cover all the bases, especially in any kind of organic fashion.

As a result I enjoyed episode 3 the most, both because of the town hall aspect as well as the musical. To me, it represented everything that was unique to GG. Plus, Lorelei meeting Sutton Foster was a weird sort of Amy Sherman-Palladino stand-in face-off (surely I'm not the only one who noticed how similar they are. They even shared the same mother figure). 

Episode 4 did have its rewards, though to me this was mostly because Emily seemed to have found herself, and also because of Sookie and Dean's appearances. The biggest problem throughout the miniseries was Rory, and the final episode didn't make things better the way it did for Emily and Lorelei. In the original series, Rory's idealism and intellectual bent was, to me, the most interesting thing about her. I also liked the way she served as a bridge between Lorelei and Emily, both literally and figuratively as she embodied elements of both women while also having her own path.

Rory continued serving that purpose in the miniseries, but the way that Rory's own life had gone was disappointing and, more than that, difficult to have empathy for.

I won't linger too long on the issue of money other than to say it's always been ridiculous the way that GG has addressed it. Lorelei's story was pretty much Cinderella's in that she ran away from her own mother and was taken in by a different wealthy mother who mentored her into a career. The fact that Lorelei could have her own house and car and presumably wasn't drowning in debt, despite raising a child on her own on a low salary in a small town, was already a pretty fantastical result for the average 16 year old pregnant teen runaway.

Rory, of course, was never going to have to worry about going hungry and homeless, given the trust fund Richard left for her in her 20s. And presumably she's been living off of it, because even at the time we left GG it was already pretty obvious that making a living as a journalist was going to be on par with making a living as an actor or author. Possible, but unlikely to be successful enough to be their main job. Which means that living off of family money gave one a considerable advantage in pursuing it.

Plus, although she's gotten some stories placed in some well known publications that's hardly been enough to pay her bills for 10 years, especially given where she lives. But she apparently wanted to make her own way, even if she had a huge safety net beneath her. What bugged me was not that she could afford to pursue a financially unrewarding career, but her attitude toward her work. Even after she got her Conde Nast meeting and after she got a potential assignment from them, she's unwilling to put in the effort because she finds the topic dull. Well, too bad! It's her job to make that story interesting. But apparently Rory believes she is owed opportunities to do what she wants to do, or to be given offers she wants to pursue.

SandeeSays lucked out in not hiring her because her lack of respect for the site, not to mention her own role there, didn't bode well for the sort of work she'd do (assuming she didn't decide to flake out of it). Rory used to be organized and serious and willing to work. Very little about her in these episodes reflected that teenager. She doesn't, for example, appear to whip her staff into shape when she takes over the Stars Hollow paper, or go looking for new ways for the paper to operate (what about digital?) Other than scrapping the poem, which she herself had been attracted to as a reader, we don't get much insight into her management. Instead it turns out that she's never once asked about the paper's distribution! How could she have failed to know that after growing up in the town? None of this screams "seasoned professional."

What's more, while it's never been clear what Lorelei's life goals would have been had they not been derailed so early, Rory did have dreams. It's unclear why she wants to be a journalist at this point, other than the fact that she likes to write. So it doesn't seem surprising that she's veering into biographies and, in the end, autobiography, as a way to do that. She seems very passionless, more worried about being seen as a success or judged as a failure, rather than working toward any particular goal. This makes her a lot less sympathetic a character. If you compare her to Taylor, whose concerns and ambitions for Stars Hollow have always seemed absurd to the point of being entertaining, he actually comes off a lot better. Whatever his unrealistic dreams, he's never failed to pursue them. 

And speaking of unsympathetic, the Summer episode made both Rory and Lorelei extremely unsympathetic. The judgmentalism at the pool, what the hell? What was enjoyable about Stars Hollow was that everyone in it was somewhat weird, and everyone else knew about their weirdness and worked with it or around it. It was part of the town's charm. There was nothing charming about those scenes. Ditto most of Rory's escapades with Logan's crew. The whole thing played out like a really uncomfortable Mary Sue storyline. It also revealed to me a serious lack of female bonding in this series epilogue.

For example, we see Lane and we see Paris, but Rory opens up very little to either of them. Lane had no scenes of consequence and all the Paris time was focused on Paris' issues (which I didn't have much of a beef with because she's high maintenance, and some friendships are simply like that). There's a little bonding that goes on with Lorelei's hiking group, but to a large degree the three Gilmore women are at odds with one another or simply not communicating. Instead the people they do confide in or have life issue discussions with are largely men. Rory's old headmaster reaches out to her, she confides in Logan and Jess, and, at the end, has a serious talk with her father. We do get scenes of Lorelei and Emily with a female therapist, but even then the progress that gets made (if there actually is any) is all off screen when either Emily or Lorelei were meeting with her on their own.

Even without the limited availability that had Sookie appearing only at the end, I don't imagine Lorelei would have initiated much of a heart-to-heart with her. Instead it is Michel who engages Lorelei in his future plans and current concerns, not unlike how Paris does with Rory. So the whole thing left me with the uncomfortable feeling that even though the final message was that "women can and should live their own lives without relying on men" (given where we leave Rory and Emily), that men are still of primary importance in giving women direction in their lives. After all, it is not Lorelei's plan to expand the Dragonfly but rather Michel's ambitions that get her investigating possibilities. By comparison, the advice that the Gilmore women do give one another which gets followed (such as Emily's therapy and return to her club, or Lorelei pursuing children) doesn't pan out.

Rory still has a lot of options open to her thanks to her wealth, the wealth of those she knows, and her educational background. But what I found I enjoyed the most was getting additional insight on Emily. Having married right out of college, whatever plans she might have had for herself got set aside pretty quickly. Being a mother was undoubtedly unrewarding, given that she and Lorelei had a difficult relationship all along. Being Richard's wife was, it is revealed, stifling, however much she may have been devoted to him and good in her role.

It's really Emily's options that are the most limited at this point, yet she's the one who makes the biggest changes. Without work experience and at her age, she's not likely to fit into anyone else's workplace, so her only options would be to create her own job (since she can afford to) or to volunteer in more rewarding places (which we get a glimpse of). But I like that we get the sense that the thing Lorelei, Emily, and Rory have all been struggling with throughout the series is the cost of being themselves and pursuing their own wishes. Emily had been corralled by convention, Lorelei by poor decision making and circumstance. But Rory had always had her vistas open and pretty much any opportunity she could have wanted.

And it seems clear that Emily is not as unadaptable as she originally seemed (which was the underpinning of her struggles with Lorelei). Freed to be herself for the first time in her life, after a period of mourning she strikes out on her own. It's not all going to be great -- infirmity and dependency are in her future. But it's nice to think that she may be entering the golden period of her life, and it's quite unlike anything she might have expected.

I suspect Rory's decisions regarding men have probably been discussed in depth elsewhere, not to mention how Paul is made into a joke rather than a case of really heartless behavior by everyone involved. It'll have some ramifications going forward but I don't plan to go into it other than to say it doesn't seem to be an area she's achieved much personal development in.

Which leads me to my concluding thought about ASP's statement that she had always planned to make Rory's final words the last words in the series. I found that this explained a great deal about why Rory's development seems to have been handled so poorly in these episodes. Had her pregnancy happened when she was in college, which is where this would have otherwise taken place, I feel that this plot twist would have made a lot more sense thematically AND it would also explain why Rory's life has gone nowhere since in this series epilogue. Apparently Rory's hopeless cycling in place was ASP's way of having Rory not moving on from where she left her. So Rory's had no fabulous career, no marriage, no serious relationships apparently, given that she is still in Logan's orbit.

Because had Rory not quite ended college when she got pregnant, she would essentially have had to choose between Emily's and Lorelei's paths in life. Either she could have married Logan and raised a child, setting aside her own goals to become the corporate wife (possibly not even finishing college). Or she would have been like Lorelei, staying in one place, and going her own way as a single mother and, likely, as a small-town girl. I think that would have been a much more interesting ending at that time than it is now.


End file.
